Needle Free Vaccine Speech

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Ding! The elevator screeches to a halt and the sleek, silver doors automatically open wide. You briskly stride down the hall towards the glass double doors of the immunization clinic, making sure to hold a sharp intake of breath the moment you whiff the strong, pungent odour of isopropyl alcohol. A familiar headache and the urge to vomit throws you off course, but you keep walking, pushing the thought of the hypodermic syringe needle away, and trying your best to forget about the soreness that is sure to come afterwards.

The word ‘trypanophobia’ may not sound familiar to you, but the fear is not uncommon: as many as ten percent of the population suffer from the fear of needles and needle procedures, which is a learned and inherited fear. This prevents them from actively seeking the vaccines they need, which may eventually lead to death in extreme cases. However, fear not! The future is promising for needle-free vaccine technology, and it has already successfully delivered an inactive poliovirus vaccine to rats.

The revolutionary idea that can change the mentality of patients going to the doctor’s office, while …show more content…

Through the process of ‘deep reactive ion etching’, nanopatches are created with uniform micro-projections with equal spacing. Each individual patch is no larger than the size of a postage stamp, and the surface is embedded with miniscule protuberances only visible at the nanoscale (approximately 20 000 projections per square centimetre). These projections are then dry-coated with vaccine. Through the use of a spring-loaded implement, the nanopatch latches onto the skin and penetrates the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of the skin, epidermis, and dermis. In this way, nanopatch has the ability to effectively deliver the vaccine, even more so than the age-old hypodermic

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